


Dulce et Decorum Est (Por Patria Mori)

by howyousay_anarchy



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Ace Hercules Mulligan, Angst, M/M, because alex is an asshole, my boi is sad, poetry based, why is lams so sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howyousay_anarchy/pseuds/howyousay_anarchy
Summary: Hamilton would make a very good woman happy, if he tried hard enough one day. Hamilton had his reputation and his pen and there was nothing that could undo him.And John, upon abandoning the ideal of completing someone, went for the next best option.Breaking things was what he did best, John thought, and Alexander had always looked so breakable.





	Dulce et Decorum Est (Por Patria Mori)

 

Dulce et Decorum Est (Por Patria Mori)

 

It was always during winter when they did this.

As if anything as fickle as weather could have caused this… this friendship, kinship, comradeship, or other things John didn’t want to have the words for.

The tent was cold; Hamilton tasted of ink, salt, and hope.

It is later, when Hamilton cries in that very same tent, that John realizes his tears taste the same way, too.

\---

The others were always not to know. That was the first thing Hamilton made sure of.

Hamilton cared what the others thought about him. Hamilton wanted to rise up. Hamilton had told them all. One of the little soldiers with big dreams-- _toy shop soldier boys_ , Laurens thinks, _toy shop_ \--who one day will be serving his country with glory.

(“John Laurens, from South Carolina.”

“Alexander Hamilton, origin unimportant. Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”)

Hamilton was still too young to know the sound of dreams being washed away. Not to break under the cruelty of others, just to dim and dull until one day you wake up and don’t realize it’s gone.

But Hamilton was different, John knew. Hamilton wrote and never looked behind and bathed in compliments made from the generals. He _earned_ those compliments. If anything, he also made sure that he was nothing less than his titles. Hamilton would make a very good woman happy, if he tried hard enough one day. Hamilton had his reputation and his pen and there was nothing that could undo him.

And John, upon abandoning the ideal of completing someone, went for the next best option.

Breaking things was what he did best, John thought, and Alexander had always looked so breakable.

\---

“Gilbert Roch Yves Maria Marquis de Lafayette.”

“Yes?”

“What do you think of just ‘Lafayette’?”

“Ah, yes, perfect.”

\---

Washington feasted with them on spoiled wine one night.

They stole it from the last of their supplies, giggling and trampling over each other, trying their very best not to. The Marquis stayed solitary and distinctly French for the rest of the night, tossing his glass away and brooding about lost love or something of the like.

He had a wife back home. An anchor of little importance. And yet.

So Hamilton spoke over the silence. Nothing of importance either, just thoughts that emerge from drowned philosophies in the West Indies and schooling from the Royal State of New Jersey.

(John has always hated New Jersey.)

That was how it started, John thinks. Hamilton looking slight and somehow impossibly huge, backdropped by candles burning, wine being chugged. Then Hamilton was rambling and John was somehow powerless to not listen.

John did not want to have enough space in his heart for that purpose.

And Hamilton strides through, more than a little shorter with a fever in his ridiculous violet eyes, so like all things concerning Hamilton as John learns later on, Laurens couldn’t refuse.

\---

A SHORT SCENE FROM A TV SHOW

Written by: Elpis

Characters: JOHN LAURENS and

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

“Revolutionary”- S1, E2

FADE IN:

INT. SOLDIER BARRACKS- NIGHT, IN THE NEAR FUTURE

JOHN LAURENS, aspiring _something_ , wakes up after a round of nightmares. He is trying to calm himself down.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON is in his own cot. He looks inquisitive, maybe too much so, and not as young as he ought to look.

 

HAMILTON

Nightmare?

LAURENS

Uh- yes, multiple.

 

Hamilton looks a touch pleased by the knowledge that he’s right. Laurens’ looks up towards the sound of his voice. It takes some time for him to pinpoint Hamilton sitting up in his bed.

HAMILTON

You were—ah, commenting, in your sleep.

 

Laurens stretches, but does not look away from Hamilton. Hamilton’s face is lit, fiery and hungry in the light of the candles next to his bed.

LAURENS

I suppose you couldn’t tell me what about?

 

A beat—and then—

 

HAMILTON

I’m sorry.

 

There’s a brief silence before suddenly, Hamilton becomes much more intentful.

 

HAMILTON

How long do you stay for?

LAURENS

As long as I need to.

 

The answer tells a lot of things that Hamilton doesn’t acknowledge, not out loud. Laurens lets out a quiet breath. Things would be fine, for now.

 

HAMILTON

Would you be interested to go to New York afterwards?

 

Laurens barks out a laugh, surprised but expecting more of an explanation. Then silence: there isn’t any.

 

LAURENS

Alright.

 

Hamilton laughs a little, jovial and celebratory.

 

HAMILTON

Alright.

LAURENS

Go to sleep, Hamilton.

HAMILTON [complacent but contemplative]

Alright.

\---

Hercules arrived before any of them had bargained.

Perhaps they always knew it would be the four of them, taking on this world and fighting, if not for themselves, then each other.

For Hercules Mulligan, a man of stature, a friend of stature, a human being of statue, to suddenly appear into the group by patting Laurens on the back as he winked and slipped him a bottle of wine was disconcerting, to say the least.

“Who—what are—thank you?” Air sloshed around Laurens’ body, confused as he is to what was happening.

And that had been it. That had been all of it.

The next time, Hercules joined them. Lafayette shook his hand, Hamilton got in about half a foot of an essay, and John patted him on the back in return.

“Hercules Mulligan.”

“A thank you for the wine from all of us.”

“Ah, no, a thank you for a good night of company.”

“And many more nights to come.”

\---

Hamilton’s hand was in his hair: there was a lot of him that John has yet to understand but god help him the man can talk.

He talked of nothing and yet everything. He talked of John’s new hair ribbon, of a new life from his own demons, of a revolution.

Then he murmured praises across John’s skin until every part of John sang in elation around him. _You taste like the battlefield._ Having Hamilton against the door was a stupendous idea, and then it became an even better idea to take him, without the wall, on the bed, even. _Laurens—_ To stifle his moans by kissing it out until it’s just the sunlight and Ham, sated, breathing in nothing and everything all at once.

(A romantic, John was, even now.)

John wanted to tear Hamilton’s clothes off at times. He wanted to force pleasure into him as if it held causal relations to happiness: to grasp him firmly and jerk and bite and lick every inch of his broken and genius body.

So that was what he did.

\---

“What do you think, mon ami?”

“Charles Lee does not understand French?”

“Oui.”

“Teach me all that I don’t know.”

\---

[Laurens cursing out Charles Lee was not funny, Hamilton told himself but could not stop his hands from clapping Laurens on the back as further buffoonery played out. In the background, Lafayette chuckled gleefully, talking in dangerously speeding French while Hercules complained about his lack of French skills. He would learn eventually, picking up bits and pieces from all of them. Everyone did.

\---

John was not good with his own mistakes.

_Laurens, be careful, it’s war out there / I know, I know, you’ll see._

Forgiving is always easy on your own. His father said that once. Maybe that was why he had slaves you could count by the dozen while John preached for the wrong ears.

_Retreat! / No, we just need time—_

His father’s philosophies spread like disease, and John was not a science man; he did not know how to prevent infections--that’s what he had always told himself.

_Take your men, they’re all you have left!_

\---

When he came back wounded but victorious, Hamilton laid him down and took him apart with the cruel efficiency of a soldier over and over again until he could remember nothing but the feeling of his entire soul shaking.

John didn't stay in Hamilton's bed.

But that was just because Hamilton didn't ask.

[While he was asleep, Hamilton looked over at him, in his own bunk. John’s eyes were not looking back, there was a tightness in Hamilton’s chest, and he felt an ironic sort of bitterness. Not necessarily correlated, he told himself, and waited for sunrise.]

\---

At dawn, Hamilton whispered poems of a new age. Revered and echoed inside the confinement of their situation, the poems bounced and became inexplicably irrevocably _theirs_.

“—An ecstasy of fumbling / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, but someone still was yelling out and stumbling / And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime—”

“I watched the void without you that is like a house, nothing left but tragic windows.”

“When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed / The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride.”

Hamilton whispered the poems to him when he fucked him. Hamilton always had an edge for poetic timing and romantic notions. But John had long forgotten what exactly Hamilton whispered about—as far as he could tell by that point, they were love sonnets, and John was panting one of his own. It was comprised of only Hamilton’s name, and John thought it made a beautiful poem.

Suddenly, Hamilton was rising over him, covering his mouth and his moans with the whispered words. He looked far too determined for a man who was supposedly enjoying himself, but John supposed that was just what Hamilton did—he solved problems.

It was just ridiculous, John thought out of nowhere, that the people talked of Hamilton's violet eyes. Hamilton’s hand, hot and insistent, was on his cock, now, and he was about to come. The women Hamilton flirted with had always said that he had violet eyes. He didn't; his eyes were blue, at times green, and looked like a sea for one to drown in. John felt himself floundering.

\---

At noon, they sat around playing cards. The Marquis had somehow convinced them to play strip poker. Laurens thanked the lord the General was traveling that week.

At dusk (because that magical time should be given a name), a soldier took out a guitar so that they could wait for the General to come back and serenade him a Happy Birthday.

(He came with Martha’s well wishes and a first smile in weeks on a face too weathered.)

John sometimes thought he worried for the wrong people. He was just not used to being right.

\---

“Fellow Soldier Mulligan, good evening.”

“John fucking Laurens, don’t you shit on me like this.”

“Joking, joking. How’s your barrack? You seem down, Herc, wanted to cheer you up… Need company? Some girls the others said…”

“No, nothing like that,” Hercules smiled a little then seemed to realize his wording. After a moment, he still didn’t change it.

“Boys then?”

Hercules shook his head minutely. John smiled at him a bit. Hercules stared a bit more, as if waiting for something caustic to explode. That was him, John would realize later. He was waiting for John to explode and turn away and not ever talk to him again.

John smiled at him a bit more, just to communicate whatever simple words could not. “I suppose we’re still better company?”

The next night, Hercules tugged him aside to give him another bottle of wine, and that had been that, too.

\---

Laurens got colonel before anything amounted to great importance for him.

(Because John Laurens did not need ranks to prove anything to anyone except for himself. Only Hamilton did that.)

It was raining, the sound hitting _one two three, one two three_ on the surface of John’s uniform, right on top of his heart. Hamilton stood next to him, ever vigilant, even in the rain, looking younger than he has any right to be with a smile on his face.

(And he has the right to look twenty, John had forgotten.)

John liked to think Hamilton looked proud of him then: the proudest he’s been of anyone. Just him, John Laurens, Colonel John Laurens. John Laurens from the Carolinas. Laurens who wanted to free the slaves. Laurens who was trying his best.

The rhythm of the rain increased. John did not study music, but he wished he did then at that very moment. A cacophony of rain landing in perfect unison—it made something beautiful. John shivered.

Hamilton’s hair fell out of place. Rain dripped from it limply.

Hamilton hated when it did that, so Laurens folded it back, if only for the sake of something he didn’t think was happening yet.

Hamilton cocked his head the way he always does, thinking; then he extends a hand. An introduction to something new. A new chapter, John thought before stepping closer.

“Alexander Hamilton, pleased to meet you, Colonel Laurens.”

“Are you, Lieutenant Colonel?” Coy, possibly sultry, a bit coquettish and tacky—denial pending.

Hamilton was pleased, it turned out, but he was also the only one who needed the uniform to come before officially congratulating John on it the next day.

\---

Before long, John choked out Hamilton’s name as he went over the edge. He had wanted not to, but a struggle with oneself was never too auspicious in its results.

Hamilton did not choke out John’s name, but a man’s articulation in bed was hardly John’s focus at that point of time.

What mattered was that he no longer wanted the cool, desolate walls—he wanted Hamilton spread out on his bed, across his mind, flipped over on the beloved chair in his office. He wanted Hamilton as a beloved, and that was terrifying.

John wanted Hamilton to be privy to himself, moaning as he comes from only Alex’s fingers tattooing a pattern inside of him.

The pattern has a name thousands of men dare not to utter.

\---

On a Thursday, Laurens fell in love.

On a Thursday, Hamilton became Alexander because John loved to whisper it across his skin.

On a Thursday, there was too much beer and too little filter until Alexander drank himself into a silent stupor and Laurens hated how unnatural it felt to not be listening to something Alex thinks, Alex feels, Alex is.

(It is Laurens telling this story now, so he doesn’t mention that he got maudlin and sad and all the things a soldier in love was, and then even more so when Hamilton--as the fellow soldier Hamilton, not Alex--asked about his wife as the source of his lovesickness.)

John was never as good as Alex when expressing himself. But on a Thursday, he was.

And he still didn't tell Hamilton a damn thing.

\---

Routine: (n.) a collection of truths that last forever

“I missed you.”

Laurens, as a response, laughed, loud and hearty as if he had just heard a fabulous joke.

“You undermine a man’s ability to treasure his dear friend, Laurens.”

Laurens gave him a push on the shoulders, then lightly says: “You undermine a man’s ability to understand his beloved, Hamilton.”

Hamilton was silent, Laurens smiled at that, cutting edges upon the soft angles of his hair.

“Ah, so how's the wife?”

“Much loved.” Hamilton wanted to turn away.

“And she's gone with her sister to the old Schuyler house for dinner?”

“Just like every other two months, John.” Hamilton was actually turning away now. John didn’t want him to, so he smiled again. He thought for a second about the Laurens nature to be cruel to their families.

“And I suppose you'll want me to fuck you now?”

They were crude words, words floating among minstrels and brothels. Hamilton winced as the curl of Laurens’ tongue caught but didn't give.

He kept going: “I suppose you'd want me to fuck you on the wall then? On the wall, with you spread out under me, begging for more, never satisfied? Tell me Hamilton, tell me if I'm right. You'll freeze up when I mention Eliza, angry when I mention work, and then grumbly when I mention Burr?”

With the last of his sentence, John jabbed Hamilton with each word onto the unevenness of the wall. “Is that what you want me to do? Huh? Tell me what you want, goddam you.”

“I—I love you, I wanted to show you that through actions rather than words, you know me Laurens, I—”

“No, that's where you’re wrong. _I_ love _you_ , Alex. I love _you_. You only love the routine of me. Brotherhood, united, searching for glory across the years. The idea is tempting, is it not, my friend? And here I could be, at your disposal, in your reach, a nice pastime. So you come over because you know I can't say no.”

John breathed hard. Hamilton held his breath.

Sighing, John stopped crowding Hamilton towards the wall because it doesn't feel right, nor is it satisfying to either parties. He cleared his throat, then stepped away.

Hamilton looked up at him, eyelashes impossibly long. “I hoped we could have something.”

“And sometimes that's not enough.”

“I thought it could be enough,” Hamilton said. Just like he thought his wife could be enough.

John, taking pity on him, took him into his arms as Alex shook with tears. And--it did taste like him still, when Alex crowded him closer and kissed him with the tears in between them.

That was the last time.


End file.
